Contractor accident halts e-mail, Internet

Workers in some North Idaho offices were unable to send or receive e-mail or access the Internet Wednesday, after a fiber-optic line was damaged.

A contractor for Avista was drilling pole holes west of Liberty Lake on Harvard Road at Wellesley Avenue when an auger snagged the overhead fiber line owned by Columbia Fiber Solutions.

Avista itself was impacted by the accident, with its computer network and Internet access down in the company’s Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint and Kellogg offices, said spokeswoman Jessie Wuerst. Internet and e-mail were down at Coeur d’Alene City Hall, but all the city’s internal databases were running, said Kirk Johnson, the city’s network systems administrator.

In Post Falls, some businesses were unable to process customers’ credit cards and there was no Internet connection at the city library. Post Falls City Hall and the police department had no problems because they operate on different lines, said city spokeswoman Kit Hoffer.

Internet and the internal computer system were down at The Spokesman-Review bureau office in Coeur d’Alene.